Jack's Lemmon: A Fistful of Fudge

 Although, Jack’s Lemmon, the Brooklyn-based masked multimedia collective, have been treading their own preposterous and shit-strewn path to artistic charlatanism for over six tedious years now, this film-flam of an album represents their first foray into music. We should have seen this coming, sneaking up on us from behind like a bear in the woods that has raided our grandmother’s wardrobe and is poised to bludgeon us over our heads with a single blow of its perfumed and elegantly-gloved paw. In fact those of us who were bothered to hover a peeper over any of the Jack’s Lemmon’s throbbing media outlets, where they haven’t stopped blabbering about this for months, did see it coming. Let’s hope it gave them time to duck.

Jack’s Lemmon first caught the piss trail of media attention with their series of art pieces distributed across the Canadian wilderness. It was called Caught in a Web of a Thousand Souls (seriously). It was basically a series of small churches (I think) constructed from the accumulated detritus of launderettes or small businesses or catteries or something (I should look this stuff up). They were designed to crumble in the elements, perhaps evoking a ‘thought’ or ‘feeling’, as if any of Jack’s Lemmon have ever had one of those. The reputed audience in the vicinity was a small clutch of squirrels, many of them children, and a possible moose (possible in the sense that it was possible that a moose could have been present, not that there was an animal that was possibly a moose, or possibly something else, like a … … well, is there anything like a moose, I mean, really, is there?) Nevertheless, some human forms were able to see this spectacle when satellite images of the pieces were relayed to the bored indifference of street-dwellers in twelve major cities across the world. Apparently it was all something to with ‘urbanisation’ and ‘community’ and ‘memory’ and blah and blah and blah. Other projects ensued, too numerous and badly thought through to go into any detail here about. Suffice to say, if you can picture an ill camel in a steep sided reservoir you’re pretty close to one of them. If you can't picture that, just end it all now.

Which brings us to this album. Yes, there’s a concept, and no, I don’t know what it is. Why would I? What I can give you is this; the entire album is one long 52 minute track. It feels more like 58 minutes. Trust me. Recordings of funeral sermons have been cut up and provide the beats. The 'd' of a 'dearly beloved' is a snare. The thud of the coffin hitting the earth is a bass drum. The wail of a grieving relative is some sort of woodblock I suppose. Over these beats are layered the grunts and groans from pornography soundtracks, stretched out and pitched up and down. A synthesiser doodles away in the background for the entirety of the album. I think a cat may have been walking on it. Finally, recorded samples of the band's own bodily functions punctuate the mess. It's worse than it sounds.

Adam Fluid is listed as the producer, presumably because he is the only member of the collective with any technical or musical ability in that he once illegally downloaded some music editing software and apparently he learnt the recorder for a few years at school. To be fair to the goon though, the production “ain't bad”. Notes sparkle, groans groan, and the thuds thud right where they should (somewhere deep in the bowels I'm led to believe). It's just a shame it sounds about as enjoyable as a wank into a fusebox. You can't polish a turd. But you can squash it into the carpet with your foot. I encourage you to do this.